The French Constitutional Council's recent decision against that nation's "HADOPI" Internet copyright law, which required ISPs to disconnect users after three purported copyright violations, naming Internet access a universal human right and bringing France into alignment with the rest of the European Union, which already rejected such "three strikes" laws last month.

There's more going on in the tech world than we've been able to keep up with recently, so we've compiled some important BitTorrent news that's fallen through the cracks bypassed the firewall. Here's a roundup of changes to Open Media Boston's favorite BitTorrent applications and services from the past couple weeks. Birdtorrent handler for Songbird media player reaches 1.0; Coda.fm music torrent site faces legal threats from Amazon; Transmission torrent client adds port randomization and more. Read on for details.

As Hulu consolidates its distribution power online by finalizing content deals with Disney, Worcester, MA nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) aims to keep video distribution open and decentralized with an updated version of its versatile, open source video player and BitTorrent client, Miro, and three outreach campaigns. Read on for a quick start guide to Miro and to learn about PCF's efforts to create Open Video on the web.

As the world witnesses the spectacle of the Pirate Bay trial enter its fifth day, a new and quietly growing music torrent indexing site adds albums, listens to user feedback, and provides new functionality. Coda.fm is the best little site for exploring music torrents we've seen since OiNK.cd was shut down in 2007. It's redefining what bittorrent can do for music sharing, and user registration is open.

In this guide, I will briefly discuss the philosophy of peer-to-peer technologies, and review my favorite bittorrent clients and trackers, as well as a network security application called Peer Guardian. Read on if you're curious about bittorrent but have never tried it, or if you already use bittorrent but are concerned about privacy and security.